I want to welcome you to the SETI@home staff weblog forum. (blog forum? Isn't that redundant?) My hope is that this forum will be a way for us to provide you with more information about what we are doing. We're a small enough staff that we don't have time to keep up with what's going on in the forums, and to some extent that has kept us from posting there. If we tried to answer every question, we would never be able to get any of the work behind SETI@home done.

The rules of this forum are:

Only SETI@home staff members and admins can start a thread. But anyone can reply. I can't guarantee that we'll have to time to actually turn these threads into conversations, but we'll try.

We're going to delete off topic responses here. But feel free start new threads in the other forums.

We'll be very strict on flaming and insults here.

But like most weblogs, I hope this will be about more than just "what I did this week." I'm going to try to post at least one new thread a week, and I'll encourage the rest of the staff to do the same. Some will be about SETI and other work, some will be about whatever it is we want to talk about.

Like all blogs, this will have a few opinion pieces. As opinions, please remember they belong to the person expressing them and aren't official positions of SETI@home or the Regents of the University of California. My opinions are mine alone. You may have opinions of your own that differ from mine. If so, you just need to understand that yours are wrong! (That was a joke by the way.)

Hopefully you'll get a better understanding of what we do, what our day-to-day lives are like, and how we are trying to improve SETI@home.

Eric, I do have some doubts about whether this will be taken as seriously by others as it should be, but I hope I'm wrong. I'm looking really forward to hearing more about what goes on behind the scenes to make all this work.

I want to welcome you to the SETI@home staff weblog forum. (blog forum? Isn't that redundant?) My hope is that this forum will be a way for us to provide you with more information about what we are doing. We're a small enough staff that we don't have time to keep up with what's going on in the forums, and to some extent that has kept us from posting there. If we tried to answer every question, we would never be able to get any of the work behind SETI@home done.

The rules of this forum are:

Only SETI@home staff members and admins can start a thread. But anyone can reply. I can't guarantee that we'll have to time to actually turn these threads into conversations, but we'll try.

We're going to delete off topic responses here. But feel free start new threads in the other forums.

We'll be very strict on flaming and insults here.

But like most weblogs, I hope this will be about more than just "what I did this week." I'm going to try to post at least one new thread a week, and I'll encourage the rest of the staff to do the same. Some will be about SETI and other work, some will be about whatever it is we want to talk about.

Like all blogs, this will have a few opinion pieces. As opinions, please remember they belong to the person expressing them and aren't official positions of SETI@home or the Regents of the University of California. My opinions are mine alone. You may have opinions of your own that differ from mine. If so, you just need to understand that yours are wrong! (That was a joke by the way.)

Hopefully you'll get a better understanding of what we do, what our day-to-day lives are like, and how we are trying to improve SETI@home.

--
Eric

hello.perhaps isn't it the good location to ask, but.. it could be really so much interesting to have informations time to time about kinds of results being interesting, how many did you get,are they easily recognized or not, etc etc..
actually forum is full of threads about server difficulties, and i realize that seti is not really very strong financially speaking.. tho the scientific idea is nice,it seems that for people, it's more a race for points...
so, giving more informations about results, even not always sure or clear, and perhaps about people who find them, it could be a way to re-center this scientific research..
thanks you, best regards from France.
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Hi Eric,
I have watched these message boards for the last fue months now and it seems that the most commonly asked questions by NEW people to seti@home are:

Where can i see the results ?

Where can i see the science behind whats going on ?

Has seti@home ever found anything ?

Where is the News ???????

It seems to me that reguardless of what other information this website has, it badly needs News updates. And some science updates. New people coming here want to know what is happening to the results that they are sending back. They want to know what radio signals we are looking at and where in the sky they are comming from. The last science newsletter posted in the science newsletter section was in August 2006. What has happened since then ?

I have personally read all the information that is avalable from the science links on the front page of this website. There needs to be a page with ALL this stuff on it. With links giving more information on each topic.

What is there at the moment is not enough. I know that we may or may not ever be able to say we have found the WOW signal but at least seti@home can tell the people what good work is being done !

Eric, i know that you could do with about 20 pairs of hands and there is never enough time, but i think this is important. I dont know that this staff blog can provide what i am talking about.

Like all blogs, this will have a few opinion pieces. As opinions, please remember they belong to the person expressing them and aren't official positions of SETI@home or the Regents of the University of California. My opinions are mine alone. ...

hello.perhaps isn't it the good location to ask, but.. it could be really so much interesting to have informations time to time about kinds of results being interesting, how many did you get,are they easily recognized or not, etc etc..
actually forum is full of threads about server difficulties, ...

There's always interest as to what is happening with the results and what is being found out, even if it's just only about how to handle the vast array of results in the first place!

Olivier,

I guess most people only get motivated to make a noise when things go wrong or when they think they see something is 'wrong' in their view. There's various other more positive threads also.

Keep up the good work,

Regards,
Martin
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See new freedom: Mageia4Linux Voice See & try out your OS Freedom!
The Future is what We make IT (GPLv3)

Can there be any good invitations/encouragements for seti members from different cultures and countries besides english speaking countries? Well it is clear anybody can post here but when people from non english speaking countries post here they make few grammatical mystakes and mostly you guys kind of ridicule them like asking to write correct english etc. So they get offended by that and very discouraged and kind of ashamed of making not perfect english written texts. It is international and maybe first very cool true international project but forum culture makes the feeling of really 5-10 english speaking allied countries thing.

Maybe in one general Entry section besides the Number crunching, Cafe, Science what if there would be International post section that listing all countries names and people from that countries can click into their country name and then can create a thread and discuss there in their own language?! That way maybe more people might have a chance to know one another or more idea sharing or have better way to know and to promote the SETI?

Personally I enter to SETI forum when there is major shut down happens to the project maybe few times an year or once in 2-3 months when really feel to have a gut to visit some dead town (sorry certain experienced alien culture or talk makes some true bore I guess to everybody).
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Mandtugai!

As I mentioned in Tony's post this was an idea that came from suggestions on how to improve communications. Many Good things/ideas came from what You chose to share. It gives the ability for Seti Staff to say something and not have to chase all the forums... It also give you the ability to reply and ask a question.

Pappa

Hi Everybody,

I want to welcome you to the SETI@home staff weblog forum. (blog forum? Isn't that redundant?) My hope is that this forum will be a way for us to provide you with more information about what we are doing. We're a small enough staff that we don't have time to keep up with what's going on in the forums, and to some extent that has kept us from posting there. If we tried to answer every question, we would never be able to get any of the work behind SETI@home done.

While I spent some time in different parts of the world while in the Navy. I Understand about being the one that does not speak the language. I understand how hard it is for many... I appreciate their efforts for trying!

That was part of the reason for Helpdesk Volunteer's from many countries...

Do not be discouraged... Many will try to help!

So we will see if Eric likes the idea and has time to see if it can happen. From my standpoint it would add another layer of complexity to getting help. The Help Staff have a large number of places to look for pleas for help... IF some one entered a question in one of the Forum's in their own language, I suspect that another would answer...

Regards

Pappa

Can there be any good invitations/encouragements for seti members from different cultures and countries besides english speaking countries? Well it is clear anybody can post here but when people from non english speaking countries post here they make few grammatical mystakes and mostly you guys kind of ridicule them like asking to write correct english etc. So they get offended by that and very discouraged and kind of ashamed of making not perfect english written texts. It is international and maybe first very cool true international project but forum culture makes the feeling of really 5-10 english speaking allied countries thing.

Maybe in one general Entry section besides the Number crunching, Cafe, Science what if there would be International post section that listing all countries names and people from that countries can click into their country name and then can create a thread and discuss there in their own language?! That way maybe more people might have a chance to know one another or more idea sharing or have better way to know and to promote the SETI?

Personally I enter to SETI forum when there is major shut down happens to the project maybe few times an year or once in 2-3 months when really feel to have a gut to visit some dead town (sorry certain experienced alien culture or talk makes some true bore I guess to everybody).

Can there be any good invitations/encouragements for seti members from different cultures and countries besides english speaking countries? Well it is clear anybody can post here but when people from non english speaking countries post here they make few grammatical mystakes and mostly you guys kind of ridicule them like asking to write correct english etc.

It's a good idea to have international forums. The hard part come in how to handle the flame wars that will eventually arise. I suppose we could require a volunteer to moderate before we open a board in each language. I'll add this to my internal suggestion box.
____________

Can there be any good invitations/encouragements for seti members from different cultures and countries besides english speaking countries? Well it is clear anybody can post here but when people from non english speaking countries post here they make few grammatical mystakes and mostly you guys kind of ridicule them like asking to write correct english etc.

It's a good idea to have international forums. The hard part come in how to handle the flame wars that will eventually arise. I suppose we could require a volunteer to moderate before we open a board in each language. I'll add this to my internal suggestion box.

I second that. According to BOINCstats we have over 205 active countries currently contributing for SAH, and while I understand that most of the users (specially those whose surf the net regularly) are somewhat used to read in English, some become very self-conscious trying to write or (worse) trying to explain something.

First, the boards can be intimidating for those of us that DO read english as our primary language, so all those who have difficulties with english should take heart. You are not alone.

Second, is there someway to implement a "translate this page" or online translating dictionary feature? This could help with the moderator issue.

Third, In my opinion, SETI (as well as all boinc projects) needs the help of the international community to acheive goals as quickly as possible. How wonderful it would be, for there to be no Work Units to be processed....because the World had finished them all.

First, the boards can be intimidating for those of us that DO read english as our primary language, so all those who have difficulties with english should take heart. You are not alone.

Second, is there someway to implement a "translate this page" or online translating dictionary feature? This could help with the moderator issue.

I believe your aforementioned grammar and spelling issues on this board that you alluded to would be a problem for most of those translators, since bad spelling and grammar isn't only limited to those using the English language.
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For the past year I have avoided the main seti forums because of all nonsense that took over the number crunching forum. Besides it was hard to sift through everything to find anything of actual importance. If it was not for the beta site and the work I do there I most likely would have stopped crunching seti units at that time. Since I don't check out that forum anymore I'm sort of left in the dark as to what is going on except for what little drifts over to the beta forum. So I would like to say again, thanks for providing a place where I'll be able to find out what is actually going on with the seti team/staff.

And thanks Pappa for posting the link to the staff blog.

Steve
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98SE XP2500+ @ 2.1 GHz Boinc v5.8.8
And God said"Let there be light."But then the program crashed because he was trying to access the 'light' property of a NULL universe pointer.

Can there be any good invitations/encouragements for seti members from different cultures and countries besides english speaking countries? Well it is clear anybody can post here but when people from non english speaking countries post here they make few grammatical mystakes and mostly you guys kind of ridicule them like asking to write correct english etc.

It's a good idea to have international forums. The hard part come in how to handle the flame wars that will eventually arise. I suppose we could require a volunteer to moderate before we open a board in each language. I'll add this to my internal suggestion box.